With a huge LED screen, life-size capability and remote feed, Luzomedia’s Red Truck is the newest rave in the Nigerian out-of-home (OOH) market, writes Goddie Ofose.
Innovation is the key driver of the out-of-home (OOH) advertising market and it is reaching new highs. In Lagos and Abuja, outdoor guys have been revving up the creativity engine.
Luzomedia
Flat panels are yielding ground to digital billboards that excite, draw more attention and give greater value to brands. And brands are willing to pay the premium demanded, or else the billboards would not be sprouting nearly everywhere every day.
Just the other day, Luzomedia unveiled what readily passes for a unipole on wheels. It studied the market, factored in the challenges of the static and stationary digital boards all over town, and created a version that moves.
All the company needed was a midsized truck and telephone calls to technology companies abroad.
Luzomedia Managing Director, Bidwell Okere, conceptualised Red Truck, passed the information to the tech folks who created a product that is so far second to none.
The Nigeria of today is very mobile. People are always on the move. In cities such as Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt, OOH people have brought brands in contact with the market.
But Okere reasoned that the normal boards might not be adequate. People mass in particular directions in certain places and at certain times, looking for business, education, excitement or relationship. A board that can travel as people move is just cool.
But the market has stuff like this. The key downside of the old version is that it is relatively small, static and rarely attract strong attention. Okere thought doing it different might pay off.
Luzomedia’s mobile advertising is built on a midsized truck. Like digital billboards, it displays via LED screens built to a huge four metres by eight metres display that combines two campaigns at the same time.
Called the Red Truck by its owners, the screen is not rooted on the truck. Like a forklift, it can be lifted for increased visibility. When lifted, it reaches five metres from the truck floor to enable exposure to distant places.
The innovation does not end here. The screen rotates 360 degrees on a pivot and has a cabin where information for display is fed.
Luzomedia, aware that activations can be done in more distant markets, also factored in a module that enables the machine to be fed from the headquarters in Lagos.
If the truck is in Abuja or Port Harcourt, information can be fed for display from Lagos, driven via a mobile telecommunication service provider.
Luzomedia has introduced a number of other innovations, among them street columns and inflatable billboards that float on land and in water.
The greatest value of Red Truck is its ability to generate certificates of relay (CoR). This solves the problem of advertisers not being able to effectively track exposure on a mobile platform except by following the vehicle around.
Luzomedia cannot manipulate the outcome because CoR is custom built. It also saves money for the advertiser who would not need a media tracker to monitor exposure.
